>> poor little pooches. glad they're okay. be careful when you're out there driving. that's it for me. i'm don lemon from the cnn headquarters in atlanta. see you back here at 10:00 around. we're going to talk about a story that made news when a television anchor addressed someone who called her fat and a role model. to celemme joins us live 10:00 eastern. jo see you then. northern ireland here for decades violence simmered, exploded, ripped families apart. a brutal battle between those who wanted more than ireland to remain part of britain and those who wanted to unite it with the rest of ireland. so painful they called it the troubles. it's been almost 15 years since

an accord brought peace to northern ireland. but now a hidden trove of audiotapes locked away in a u.s. college archive threatens to unravel the uneasy status quo. >> i knew she was being executed. i knew that. i didn't know she was going to be buried. >> and calls into question the very balance between peace and justice. >> at the very beginning of the troubles we were put out of our home. >> helen mckendry had nine brothers and sisters and a family on the front lines of the troubles. >> we lived in east belfast, which is mainly protestant, and my parents had a mixed marriage so we had to leave. they threatened to kill my father. >> a mixed marriage because her father arthur was a catholic, her mother jean a protestant.

putting them on both sides of a bitter divide. northern ireland is part of britain, protestant fighters known as loyalists along with the police and army were fighting to keep the status quo. catholics, nationalists and republicans were fighting to kick out the british and reunify all ireland. but the irish republicn army, the i.r.a., at the forefront. while jean and arthur lived a happy life together, outside their home, all hell was breaking loose. protestant against catholicing, houses burned, communities divided. >> every day you would see somebody being shot, injured, and bombs going off all around us. and that's the way it was. we just got used to living like that. we didn't think it was any different from anywhere else in the world, really.

>> after helen's father died, her mother jean was left to raise the ten children alone. >> when you come home from school, she was there with a cup of tea, some toast. going to bed at night, mum was there, you know, just doing what every mother does. she was a happy go lucky person. she would have done anything to help anyone. >> but that changed the day the i.r.a. took her mother away. >> they came about tea time and they dragged her out of the bathroom and dragged her out. >> it was december 1972. the last time helen would see her and the beginning of helen's quest for the truth. a quest she would get little help with until she met her future husband shamus, a little later. >> i made helen a promise there and then that i would do everything in my power to find

the truth. >> they would need each other. they were up against the powerful, violent i.r.a. >> we knew it was the i.r.a., but we went to people and asked questions, and we were told, no, your mother -- we had your mother, but she's gone now. and apparently they had let her go and she was in england, and she would come home for us. >> it was all lies. decades would pass. no sign of her mother. in 1998, the good friday peace agreement was signed, i.r.a. and loyalist paramilitaries laid down their weapons. peace had come to northern ireland but not to helen. >> i wanted to know where my mother was. i wanted had h ed her body back. i wanted an end to what we had to suffer for all those years. >> though now officially at peace, the i.r.a. did not relish helen's constant questions and

did not want to reopen the past. the i.r.a. turned to its tactic of intimidation forcing helen and her family to flee our home. >> our children were beaten up, the car was destroyed. it was one thing after another. we couldn't sleep, we were just waiting on the door opening and a bomb getting chucked in or somebody coming in and putting us to sleep forever, you know. >> finally, it was here on this lonely beach more than 30 years after she disappeared that jean's body was discovered in 2003. no one has been charged with her murder. for ireland, it was an uneasy peace. for helen and her family, it's been four decades of unanswered questions. >> all i ever wanted was to know the reason why they killed my

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even in death, there was little peace for jean mcconville's family. she was buried in a quiet

cemetery outside belfast. the family say the i.r.a. wanted her funeral to be kept low-key. yet another cruel blow for jean's daughter helen. >> after the burial, there's all different sorts of emotions running through your head. you get angry. you get, you know, mad at people. >> nothing can bring her mother back, heal the pain of lives soured by suffering. it's when you walk the streets here that you realize just how locked in the past these communities are. constant reminders, these murals, just when they walk to the shops of everything bad that happened before. it seems no one here really wants to let go of the past. helen needs a way to move forward to understand the past. just as this man hopes to do. three years after the good friday deal brought peace to northern ireland, anthony mcintyre began trying to make

sense of what had happened. >> i wanted to get as many historical voices out as possible and to give an insight into why people who would behave peacefully in a normal society turn to violent methods. >> mcintyre began taping interviews in theopes northern ireland's violent past might some day be better understood. archiving them here at boston college, inside this library are the belfast project archives, an oral history of some of northern ireland's darkest secrets cataloging from both sides of the divide 3 years of bitter sectarian fighting between catholics and protestants known as the troubles. >> that was me back in 1988 in a very relaxed pose in the prison classroom. >> mcintyre isn't just any researcher. he was once a jailed member of

the i.r.a., the irish republicn army that led a terrorist campaign in the hope of forcing the british from ireland. >> i got out at the very end of '92, last week of december '92, christmas week. >> after leaving prison and the peace accord was signed, mcintyre, now a phd, persuaded hiss former comrades to tell their stories. >> i thought i was doing something good for the community, for society and for academia and the production of knowledge in general. i think it's also important from a point of view of truth recovery. >> but convincing members of the i.r.a. to talk about who they were and what they did was tricky. the i.r.a. demands a vow of secrecy on pain of death. so mcintyre and boston college agreed to keep the i.r.a. interviews secret until the men who gave them were dead. >> do you have a problem with

committing all this to a secret tape to be used only after you have died? >> i don't have a problem with that. if i did have a problem with that, i wouldn't be sitting here talking into your microphone. >> this is the audio recording of mcintyre's interview with his former i.r.a. cell mate brendan hughes. first broadcast several years after his death in 2008. rare words. rare admissions from the secretive terrorist organization. >> a lot of the stuff that i'm saying here, i'm saying it in trust. because i have a trust in you. and i have never ever ever admitted to being a member of the i.r.a. never. i've just done it here. >> hughes was the i.r.a. commander in jean mcconville's neighborhood the night she was abducted. he says he knows who was responsible for her killing. >> i knew she was being executed. i knew that. i didn't know she was going to be buried or "disappeared" as

they call them now. >> this is exactly the information that helen mckendry has wanted for 40 years. and few know for sure what other answers, what other closure the archives might provide. but opening the archives is a dangerous business. the tapes could contain explosive revetions, could implicate important irish figures, and could reopen the wounds of a painful past. northern ireland's police want access to the secret tapes, but in rare bipartisan agreement u.s. politicians warn against it. >> what purpose now to say, after people used weapons years ago, when we the u.s. were almost a geurinor, saying, if you come forward, put down your weapons, we will stand by you. >> in a forthright letter, democratic senator john kerry weighs in, too, warning secretary of state hillary clinton of the dangers. as chairman of the senate

foreign relations committee, i am obviously concerned about the impact that it may have on the continued success of the northern ireland peace process. kerry continues -- it is possible that some former parties to the conflict may perceive the effort by the uk authorities to obtain this information as contravening the spirit of the good friday accords. the good friday accords that brought peace to northern ireland and that provided a foreign policy triumph for president bill clinton. when i met owen patterson, the british government's most senior northern ireland politician, at the time the police requested the project tapes, i discovered there is a desire for the belfast project but little appetite for u.s. interference. >> i think it's a good thing to capture these memories, and it's not just an issue of the political history or the violence. i think it's very interesting

social and economic history to be written. >> why go through with this process? why have the police embarked on this? >> well, that's a question you would need to address to the police. if the police have a line of inquiry to pursue and interests in bringing a case to court, that is for them, and it is quite wrong for a politician to interfere in that process. >> for british officials, releasing the secret tapes is a matter of justice. but for mcintyre, it may be a matter of life and death. >> i feel that there's always the possibility of somebody throwing a petrol bomb at the house or throwing an improvised grenade through the window. >> in the i.r.a.'s eyes, mcintyre could be considered an informer, a crime seldom forgiven. >> we're dealing with people here who buried jean mcconville on a beach 30 miles up the road.

>> for now, the decision whether to release the tapes is in the hands of an american court and, with it, mcintyre's safety. helen mcconville's answers. and northern ireland's peace. [ engine revs ] i'll take it. [ male announcer ] it's chevy truck month. now during chevy truck month, get 0% apr financing for 60 months or trade up to get the 2012 chevy silverado all-star edition with a total value of $8,000. hurry in before they're all gone! by the armful? by the barrelful? the carful? how about...by the bowlful? campbell's soups give you nutrition, energy, and can help you keep a healthy weight. campbell's. it's amazing what soup can do.

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violence and anger were tearing northern ireland apart. >> we were robbing banks, robbing post offices, robbing trains. >> and men like former i.r.a. commander brendan hughes were to blame. >> planting bombs, shooting brits, trying to stay alive ourselves, trying to stay from getting arrested. >> explosive revolutions on audiotape, hughes' memories and those of more than 50 other former combatants in northern ireland's troubles are held here at boston college. these tapes contain sensitive and secret information about the troubles and what happened and who was involved and why. helen mckendry believes the tapes contain incriminating clues that could point to her mother's murderers. have you asked the police to pursue the tapes? >> yes, we have, of course. yes. >> after almost a lifetime of disappointment, the mckendrys are beginning to believe that truth and justice may be within reach. >> we didn't really care for the

foot soldiers that were tasked with killing her mother perhaps, disposing of her body. it was the generals that told them to do it. and those generals are masquerading now as politicians in suits and ties and, yes, of course it's only natural we'd wish to bring them down. yeah. >> norther ireland's police, agents of the british government, have subpoenaed the tapes, believing they contain critical information about jean mcconville's murder, but ed maloney, the archives' former director believes exposing the secret tapes could lead to more violence. >> it is a crime in their eyes, in the leadership of the i.r.a.'s eyes, punishable by death to betray secrets to anyone outside of the organization, which they were doing. and these subpoenas have put the interviewees in danger for that

reason. >> the men who gave their secret testimonies did so confidentially, in hopes that some day history might learn from their actions, sharing their words endangers their safety and promises to open old wounds. now the next battle in northern ireland's bitter history is being fought here where ed maloney and former researcher an tony mcintyre are appealing a u.s. court ruling that the tapes must be released. to mcintyre, it's a huge problem for which he blames his american employer. >> boston college violated every guarantee of confidentiality by even giving them to the district court judge. >> by failing to fight to keep the archives secret, says mcintyre, boston college has put dozens of lives at risk. >> i feel very, very badly let down by the boston college authorities. they should have worked to protect research participants

and the archive itself. >> i'd like to invite ed maloney to the podium, please. >> former project manager ed maloney agrees. >> sadly, boston college's behavior since the subpoenas were served has been nothing short of disgraceful. >> maloney accuses the college of failing to fully challenge subpoenas issued by the united states attorney general, demanding they hand over some of the trove to northern ireland's police. >> here is boston college, huge institution, wealthy institution, could easily afford to continue this fight, should continue the fight because if this case is lost, it has terrible, terrible implications for the whole tradition of oral history, which is a very rich tradition. >> maloney an award-winning documentary filmmaker, has written cutting-edge books on the i.r.a. and irish politics and is now appealing the

subpoenas with researcher antony mcintyre in a last-ditch bid to protect the i.r.a. members they interviewed. as for boston college -- >> it's not boston college's fault. >> they said -- ed maloney forgoed his obligation. >> the obligation broken when maloney quoted from the archive. >> it all went wrong regrettably when a book was published in 2010 called "voices from the grave" that brought attention to an archive that had otherwise been at boston college for five years without any recognition, quite frankly of. >> the book in which boston college was heavily involved even pushed for sooner publication features experts

from interviews of brendan hughes and one of his former enknee mees. by agreement, their words made public only after their death. but the allegations and arguments don't stop there. the university accuses maloney of underplaying the risks to interview interviewees. >> from the beginning, we said to the projecting organizer, who approached us with this idea, that there were limitations regarding the assurances of confidentiality under american law. specifically, he was told these assurances of confidentiality would not withstand a subpoena. >> across the atlantic in belfast, these recriminations are an irrelevance. police investigations have begun, triggered, they say, by ed maloney's book. police decline interviews, but in a short press release outline the following -- police say they'll follow the material in the boston archives all the way to court na's where it takes them. they say detectives have a legal

responsibility to investigate murders and follow all lines of inquiry for the victims, for their next of kin, and for justice. ultimately, the whole archive, not just the i.r.a. tapes releasing to jean mcconville's death, but any interviews by i.r.a. or loyalist fighters could be at risk. >> if uk law enforcement seeks a subpoena through the u.s. attorney's office regarding criminal investigations, in light of the precedent that this case has set, yes, boston college could be liable to turn over additional materials. >> do you think in your heart that these tapes will be handed over here? >> i'm hoping that they will be. yeah, i'm hoping. that's all i can do, is hope. plaque psoriasis. i decided enough is enough. ♪ [ spa lady ] i started enbrel.

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there is a northern ireland an unease. communities clinging to faith, holding on to their histories. ever present the belief that the other side of the religious political will dividivide is ge better deal.

on the contentious issue of unsolved murders, that unease is acute. jean mcconville's family is not the only one in need of answers. mcconville was killed by the i.r.a. while pat finucane was gunned down. he was killed by loyalist paramilitaries, shot 14 times in front of his family. he had risen to prominence in the courts defending the i.r.a's loyalist and paramilitaries. some reports say his killers acted in collusion with the police, the police and army subject to the british government. tony blair promised finucane's family an inquiry. but late last year, when his

wife went to vivid david cameron, britain's current prime minister, the british government's message had changed. there would be no inquiry, no effort to find new evidence, no deeper look at how the british government may have been involved in finucane's death. >> if they don't give an inquiry into my husband's murder, which was promised, it will just increase the suspicions. and there are many dissident republicans who are saying, same old brits, nothing has changed, we still need to fight against the british government. and it is giving ammunition to people to return to violence. >> british officials say they're doing enough to investigate what happened to finucane. >> we spent some time looking at every possible option, and the prime minister took personal interest in this case. and we concluded that actually the best route was to let loose an internationally renowned

lawyer on a huge archive of government and police material. and that is exactly what we've done. >> but ed maloney says it isn't nearly enough. even as the british government and northern ireland's police, the psni, are fighting to open the secret boston college archive, the finucane's case show they refuse to examine their own wrong doing. >> while the psni is demanding the right to rummage through the archives of boston college, david cameron is refusing the finucane's ability to go through their archives. that's double standard. >> richard o roar, an i.r.a. member for decade as cannot understand why british police are pushing so had hard for the tapes. >> i find it just imponderable police are going down this road when they must know there is no chance of obtaining any convictions at the end of this. >> the main value of the

archive, says o'rore, is healing. for him, giving his interview to boston college ten years ago was life changing. >> i remember breaking down, actually breaking down and uncontrollably -- we had to stop the interview. >> crying. >> crying, yeah. i was never the same after that. and thatas the thing about boston for me. it was a catalyst. >> a catalyst to tell his story. he has no blood on his hands, never killed anyone, he says, but, even so, since the subpoenas in boston, he's been watching his back. >> i've spoken to leading lawyers, particularly from me own point of view, and asked them how credible would these tapes be in evidential terms. and they were absolutely adamant that there would be no evidential value in them whatsoever. >> a sentiment echoed by a former i.r.a. enemy, william plum smith. >> there's no golden treasure there. i mean, where people are going to get mass prosecutions. so it's giving people false will

hope. it's delaying any truth recovery process. >> smith's community was ravaged by violence, the i.r.a. blowing up pubs, shops, killing and maiming. loyalists like smith struck back, setting out to cause equal or worst carnage on their catholic enemies. now they find they have something in common, a deep distrust of police efforts to access their confidential interviews. >> you can't expect people to talking if on one hand and be open and honest and candid as much as they can be and then have the police knock on their door and say, you said this or you said that. >> cutting short the project, a huge loss for future generations. >> this would be a very valuable historical archive, a very useful tool for future students of conflicts, also for policy makers because what we were

providing here, very -- i think in a very realistic way, was a glimpse into the mind of the terrorist. >> and into the truth of what really happened during the worst of the troubles. here brendan hughes tells a story of one of the i.r.a.'s biggest atrocityatrocities, blo friday. >> i was responsible for a fair deal of the bombs going into the town. it wasn't directly my decision to do this, but i was the person that organized it. >> in the space of 80 minutes, 22 i.r.a. bombs went off here in the streets in the center of belfast. it was just after 2:00 in the afternoon the 21st of july 1972. nine people were killed, 130 wounded, 77 of them women and children. >> it was a major, major operation but it was never, ever

intended to kill people. i mean, if i could reverse the situation, i would. i have a fair deal of regret. >> it is a tiny tip of an iceberg of information that mcintyre and maloney fear could trigger police demands for all the tapes in the boston archive to expand investigations beyond jean mcconville's murder. promising answers to some, possibly threatening the lives of others.

murals like these in a catholic housing project in belfast, northern ireland, are a reflection of a community and its heroes. but when brendan hughes broke a vow of silence and named the man he claimed was responsible for jeane mcconville's death, a mural in his memory was painted over, only recently redone. it is a clear example of the power the interviews in the boston college archives may have to awaken demons and destabilize northern ireland's uneasy peace. hughes' words split his community. >> the special squad was brought

into the operation then, called the unknowns. you know, when anyone needed to be taken away, they normally had done it. i had no control over this squad. gerry had control over this particular squad. >> gerry is gerry adams, hughes' i.r.a. commander in the early 1970s. and now one of northern ireland's most important political figures. >> gerry adams was probably the most key i.r.a. leader that the armed republican campaign produced. he was the heart of every decision and every strategic direction that the i.r.a. took. >> adams rocketed through the i.r.a. ranks, was welcomed in the u.s. by president clinton, silenced the i.r.a. guns for the landmark agreement that ended decades of bloodshed and ult will malt emerged as the most influential and important catholic politician in northern

ireland. gerry adams has refused our request for an interview, but in the past he has said many times he was never in the i.r.a. and certainly never involved in the death of jean mcconville. his press spokesman goes further, labeling adams' critics as anti the peace process. but the interviews held in the secret archive and the words of brendan hughes tell a very different story about adams and his actions. >> brendan hughes wasn't the type to tell lies. >> richard o'rourke who shared a jail cell with hughes remembers how close he and add hamz were. >> they were ideologically they were virtually inspatial. his whole talk was about gerry. >> i trusted the man at that time, and i trusted his political maneuvering and his political direction. >> by the late 1970s, hughes,

o'rourke, anthony mcintyre and hundreds of their i.r.a. mates were in prison. in 1980, hughes and several other i.r.a. prisoners upped the ante and went on hunger strike. >> i remember the first day of the hunger strike and they came and left the food at the door of the cell. and i remember t feeling then of looking around the cell and saying to myself, this the first day of the last day of my life. >> after 66 days, hunger strikers began to die of starvation. meanwhile, as o'rourke ran the i.r.a.'s propaganda from inside prison, he says adams negotiated with the government on the outside. >> the british government came and made a secret offer to us, the prison leadership, through an outside committee that was controlled by gerry adams. >> but adams, he says, withheld the government offer to end the strike, causing the deaths of half a dozen of his own i.r.a.

fighters. >> i have never, ever veered off what i believe to be the essence of what happened. the last six hunger strikers didn't need to die, but that all came out of boston. >> at boston, where interviews and the explosive allegations they contain threaten to redefine one of northern ireland's most important figures. for his claims, o'rourke was ostracized, cut off from the community he loved. but when british government records were released last year, detailing the offer made to the prisoners, o'rourke said he was vindicated. >> brendan hughes, in my view, rarely -- i never, ever told me any lies. >> and gerry adams has. >> yes, of course he has. he's told lies about the hunger strike to try and cover up his involvement. gerry adams will tell lies if he has to. that'sater off a duck's back

to him. >> o'rourke is not alone in his perception. adams' denial of i.r.a. membership has driven some of adams' most faithful away from him. >> i feel absolutely disgusted when he abandons the i.r.a. volunteers and he can't stand shoulder to shoulder with them. i can understand him not admittiadmi admitting being a member of the i.r.a. because it could lead to prosecution. but i cannot understand why he creates this false narrative that he never was in it. >> it means that people like myself had to carry the responsibility of all those deaths. gerry was a major, major player in the war, and yet he's standing there denying it. >> if even part of the boston college archivesnd end up in police hands, adams' denials could face more challenges than they have in the past, a major problem for a major politician

and perhaps a major problem for northern ireland. adams and the allies who support him are a critical half of maintaining the status quo, the revelations of the archives could endanger his support, even as they provide closure to others. in question, the very balance between peace and justice. ♪

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much of northern ireland has returned to the bucolic calm for which this emerald isle is so romantically renowned. in these green fields it is easy to imagine tranquility has come to stay. but close in on belfast, always the crucible of the conflict, and the long fingers of snaking concrete and brick walls that weave mile after mile of the city tell a different story. known as the peace walls, they

keep the peace by dividing, not uniting, the communities. this country is still so divided that many people are just too afraid to cross the sectarian divide, come through the gates in the peace walls, just to walk through their neighbors' communities. william plum smith the former loyalist prisoner, lives close to the peace wall and is at the forefront of building cross-community relations with his former enemies in the i.r.a. >> so you're always working at pace. we still continue even today to work at peace. and it's a slow, long process. it's not like a water tap where you can turn it on, turn it off. >> bitter experience has taught him trouble increases as the pace of peace slows. and right now the controversy over opening up the boston college archives is an impediment they don't need. >> the more barriers is put up, the more impediments put up, it

affects the peace process, delays it, maybe for a while, maybe causes an increase in violence. >> smith and others whose interviews are in the archives worry that releasing the tapes could threaten both the peace and their personal safety. but advocates for victims believe just the opposite, that the tapes are the path to peace. >> we need to be seen to be looking at each of the incidents of the past with diligence and with care and with as much skill as we can bring to the peace. >> mcburney represents many families still trying to get the truth about how their loved ones died. and wants all the tapes in the archive given to the police. >> there are details within the

archives which would be much more mundane andrew teen piec r of information which feed into other murders, other bombings, and a much more low-key but very significant way. >> close to 4,000 people were killed during the troubles, but mcburney fears the police are using the wrong case to try to force open the secret archive. jean mcconville's death is one of the most notorious killings in ireland, allegedly under the command of one of the most important politicians. and that could mean access to the archives and the answers they contain could be blocked. >> a lot of that information will be lost if, because of the sensational nature of the particular case that's being

opened up, if you like, through the archives, because it involves gerry adams and because it has implications perhaps politically and so forth. >> british officials say that neither the nature of the crime nor the alleged perpetrator, even adams with whom they negotiated peace trading on his violence past to silence the i.r.a. guns are an issue. >> we've been quite clear as a government there can't be any concept of amnesty. so we have to support the police to have complete operational independence in pursuing every line of inquiry, in bringing those who committed crimes to justice. but i think the very simple point is, no one person is above the process. no one person is above the law. >> but researcher and former i.r.a. member anthony mcintyre is as determined to protect the ar kiefz' confidentiality and others are to expose its secrets.

>> i will go to jail to protect gerry adams as quickly as i would go to jail to protect any other person, individual person, possibly implicated as a result of this process. i think that's an ethical imperative. >> for helen mckendry, it is not about politics. not about legal battles. it is simply about closure for the death of the mother she loved. >> if we get the tapes back, this may put an end to everything. >> what do you think might be in those tapes? >> the truth. i think that's why they don't want us -- the people, you know, we do want the tapes to be released because the truth's on them. >> when you say they don't want them to be released, who do you mean? >> the i.r.a. and the people who were interviewed on the tapes. >> i think it's imperative that the tapes be handed over immediate immediately. >> but the mckendrys know what they may hear may be painful. they've already had a taste of it from brendan hughes,

explaining why at the time he believed helen's mother a widow with ten children needed to be silenced. >> she had a transmitter in her house. the british supplied the transmitter into her flat. we took her away, interrogated her, and she told what she was doing. she was getting paid by the british to pass on information. she deserved to be executed, i believe, because she was an informeror and she put other people's lives at risk. >> the i.r.a. said that your mother was an informer, informing on their activities to the british troops. >> yeah. which is lies. i mean, my mother would not have known anything about the i.r.a. she, as i say, a mother of ten, at home every day with her family. >> there can be little solace, too, knowing that hughes came to regret his role it changes

nothing. >> looking back on it now, what happened to the woman was wrong. >> what the boston college subpoena story is about, really fundamentally deep down, is the failure of those involved in the conflict in northern ireland to deal with the past or to agree on a way to deal with the past. >> i mean, if the mcconville family were to succeed in this, i think of the vast number of people who will never have truth about what happened to their loved ones. because the only reason that this has come to the fore about mrs. mcconville is because people were prepared to talk in conditions which would not lead to prosecutions. >> i've lived all my life in fear. they destroyed my mother's life, my family life. and they tried to destroy what life i have now. to me, it's just really a joke. they're worried about they are

going to be in danger? they are the people who committed the crimes in this country. they should be worried. >> mcintyre and all those involved in the boston college archive now share the same fear -- no one else will come forward to tell their secrets, afraid of prosecution. and that would mean the archives' reach for truth is lost before it could grow to include police, soldier, even british government officials who, like the i.r.a. men, may have their bloody truths to share. all eyes now are on the u.s. courts, waiting for a ruling on whether the subpoenas will be upheld and the archives opened. what secrets do they hold? what impact will it have? no one can know. but whatever happens, the full stories of jean mcconville's death and so many others may still never be known.